Wordless Wednesday - 7

Example of a "Meaningless" post

A hectic day at work - skipped my lunch and ended up crawling into the kitchen after work just to find nothing.  Too busy and too tired today, but managed some simple dinner.  And then I realised "Dammit today is not a Wednesday".  Had it been a Wednesday, I would lousily posted a picture and attempted to write no word on them.  Why there's no Wordless Tuesdays! 


I browsed through some photos and realised that my brain has gone on a vacation and had sent me out of office reply.  I do have loads of topic, but my fingers are aching from typing, my eyes are craving to sleep and my brain has stopped functioning.  


So I happily take the liberty to write at-least one nonsensical post per week considering my sincerity and determination to post every single day no matter it rains or snows. "As if all your posts are so intellectual" you may ask.  That's right in one way.  So I take the liberty to write only such aimless posts this whole year then!  


And why on earth do we have to strain our self on work so much when we can't even eat or sleep properly.  I was very happy without this job doing farming and fishing. And today I don't even play any virtual games :(


I can continue to puke pointless words forever, but who will strain their eyes to read them..so this has to stop.  But one last thing before I leave.  Probably only motivating thing that happened today.
What a win India had today, probably after so many months of anticipation.  After the world cup the team has gone on hibernation or what?  They never had luck favoring them in any previous matches.  It was such a relief to see India winning again. 

Value of life!

We hardly realise the importance of a person when they are with us.  We neglect to show them the love, affection and care amidst the busy life.  And one unfortunate day, when we realize that the person is no more, we regret and talk about how much we miss them and love them.  I'm not scourging over and say this is wrong. But had we told this when the person is with us, they would have felt really happy isn't' it?

Just when I came back from my short vacation, I was traumatized to see a sad news.  A good friend/colleague of mine had posted in FB that her boyfriend is no more.  I was shocked!  They were living together for more than 5 years, and had so many plans for their future.  And I couldn't pacify or console my colleague over this loss.  

I'm not very good at handling such news.  I've gone through such tough time of losing someone probably once - a classmate of mine me during my college.  He was not a close friend, but that still disturbed me for very many months.  I normally can't bear the grief of these accidents or death even in movies.  And if it's a real incident and that too happening to some close circle of yours would bring all the jerk in us.  

But the known fact is that all of us will have to leave this world once. Despite knowing this, why do we grieve?  And why can't we tolerate their loss?  
And losing someone through natural aged death is different to accident or other means.  And that's when I questioned myself as how often do we express our love?.  A hug, a cuddle, a kiss, a smile, a "love you" - how many times have we shared it with our dear ones??  Or how often?

The ongoing dilemma

I'm in a total dilemma whether to remain in blogger or move over to wordpress or to have own domain.  


I've thought over this for about 1 million times, and still can't make out what I should be doing.  It seems like a tough decision to move away from blogger.  
I created an account few months back in wordpress, but never moved because I was too lazy or too loyal to blogger - don't know :(


What would you vote for?  Blogger or Wordpress? 
Please help me decide on this..
PS: Thanks to all those who voted for me in the previous contest.  It means so much to me. thanks again :)

Photography Gyan # 7 (General)

If you are serious about improving your photography skills, another basic thing you need to do is share your pictures. And don't expect people to write "beautiful, lovely" or relevant adjectives, but some really good critics on your photography.  I'm not a great photographer, but I aspire to become one. If you do want to, you need to open your pictures for comments and critics.


For this to happen, you need to interact with photographers.  It is not very difficult in this internet era to identify that like minded person who could share the time with you for the photo shoot.  Get indulged into a photo networking site like Flickr.  You will have a place to see the pictures that are framed differently - some artistically, some technically!


So many times during my early photography learning phase (just around 3 years back), I would just visit the flickr and go through 1000s of photos everyday.  Trust me here..it's so inspiring to see the insects and birds in closeup, people in portrait, or motion captures, or night shots.  
And today after spending so much time on photography, all I learnt is just minuscule.   I'm learning everyday.  These photo networking sites not only inspires you by seeing jaw dropping pictures, but gives others a chance to see what you got in store.  


There are some really nice folks who spend time in giving you the suggestions on how to improve your picture.  I've learnt them - how to work on sharpness, reduce the noise, how to frame, how to edit or post process a photo - plenty of these.  
I'm not promoting Flickr here.  I'm asking you to promote your picture to get better at it.  You can do it in any website.  There are even photo groups in facebook.  But consider this as the first step towards becoming a good photographer!

The one who painted the story!!

Travelling is so much fun.  But what give more gratification at the end are the pleasant memories that we carry along with us.  Be a roman while you are in Rome.  It does stand true.  To experience a real taste of a city or a village, a little conversation with the local people is essential and it does marvels to the whole experience you get.


Often when we traveled in non-English speaking countries, it became a bit arduous if we had to ask for anything – route, nearby restaurant, or tourist attraction.  We had to ask “Excuse me, do you speak English?” for which we knew the answer beforehand that they are going to say “No”.  But these strangers in the foreign land are always happy to help the lost tourist like me, even through the sign language! Never once they have annoyed in helping us.


While I thought about what to write for this contest, I realised that I did make some nice acquaintances with strangers from these unknown lands.  Be it the Gondola rider who made our ride a very romantic one, or the Aussie couple with whom we shared our travel stories at a youth hostel, or the roadside vendor who shared his desire of visiting India or the B&B owners who became really good friends.  At every place I have been so far, I have handful of fond memory of a person whose name I don’t even know.


I have sieved through a good handful of people and decided to write about this person.

He was a local guy who lives in the fishing village of Marsaxlokk, in the south eastern part of Malta.  He explained a great deal about fishing, boats, painting and how local people rely on the tourism and fishing.  While we pestered him about local restaurants and vegetarian food, he painstakingly showed us the way to a good restaurant, and even came inside and explained to the chef about our veggie requirements.  Thanks to him.  Otherwise we would have struggled to explain or would have ended up eating nothing there. 

He was a cool guy!  He allowed us to take pictures of him, his priceless possession – boat which he was painting to earn some money during the forthcoming sunnier days.  He was taking care of his boat like a baby – cleaning every nook and corner of the boat.  While we left the village he was half way through the painting, but his old looking boat now carried a charming new look.  It was gorgeous.  

Marsaxlokk is indeed a beautiful village to spend afternoon or evening taking a long stroll along the harbour (that's beautifying as my current header).  It puts your eyes in dilemma whether to watch the crystal clear turquoise mediterranean or the colorful Luzzu (these colored boats are called Luzzu in maltese and they normally have these eyes referred as Eye of Horus). 

This is the "Our Lady of Pompeii Church", twin towered baroque architecture of 19th century. Between these two towers you can see Virgin Mary standing on a traditional luzzu overlooking the sea. 

The village also has impressive Sunday market, where you can get hand made Maltese lace works, fresh fish, toys, clothes, maltese wines etc.   Walking along the harbour you can see Marsaxlokk power station amidst the sea.  


Marsaxlokk is overall a lovely place to be in.

This post is my entry for Indiblogger's -"Around the World with Expedia" blogging contest (http://www.expedia.co.in/). 

Thursday Challenge - TWO

This week's prompt is "TWO" (people, animal, flowers, pillow, candle,building etc)and I jumped from my bed in such a happiness that I have loads of pictures matching this prompt, but again sulked back.  Coz, I just recently posted so many duo pictures around Valentine's day (here, here and here) and now I run short of them :( 

So decided to post a personal picture for this week's TC.  


Edited on 24/02/12 to add the below information:-
This is taken along the Jurassic Coast along English Channel on the southern part of England (Dorset).  Known as Durdle door this is a limestone arch. Please refer this link for any additional information on this location.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durdle_Door

Wordless Wednesday - 6

Do you know him?

Sir James Young Simpson - Guess who is that?  He's a Scottish doctor - the person behind the  discovery of anesthetic properties of chloroform and introduced it for general medical use.  This is his statue at Princes Street Gardens, in Edinburgh.  

Song for today!

I totally appreciate that you've been reading these scheduled posts for the last few days.  On it's continuation, while I do have lots of topics to be written, I needed some time, and it can't happen on a scheduled post, especially when I was in such a hurry to type in 6 random scheduled posts.  So, I am just hitting simple ones. 

This is such a mesmerizing soothing song I've heard and it's repeated in my iphone every often.  Apologies for posting a regional song, but you will so be hooked to this song, if you hear it once. 

The movie is called Madrasapattinam.  I will let you read through wiki for the movie..Both the movie and songs were too good.  Being a chenniitte myself, I couldn't stop relishing this movie which was set during the 1947's Madras.  

If you like melody, romance with a classical touch, go for this!  It will soon be your favourite too :)

Spinach Pakora

With less preparation time, it's a simple snack to munch on along with your piping hot tea on a chilly day.  

Ingredients:

Gram Flour/Chickpea flour - 1.5 cup
Spinach (nicely chopped) - 2 cup

Rice flour - 2 tsp
Red chilli powder -  a pinch
Green Chillies - 1 (finely chopped)
Ginger garlic paste - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp 


Preparation time: 15 minutes

Procedure:
1.  Mix all the ingredients together with little bit of water.  The batter you make should not be watery, but stiff and thick. 
2. Heat up oil in a deep frying pan.  Once it's heated up, take a little amount of batter and make fritters. 
3.  Let the fritters deep fry.  Once you see them turn brownish, them them off the pan.
4.  enjoy the hot spinach pakora with a sip of chai and get immersed in your favourite book.  
Note:  You can also add onion or a few mint leaves into the batter to add different taste and flavor.  

Molecular Man

These are the 30 metres tall molecular man structures built by an American artist Jonathan Borofsky.  This picture above is captured in Berlin, Germany.  There's also another similar structure in Iowa state, USA.   The sculpture has 3 humans leaning towards each other, with their body having numerous holes which represents molecules.  

Mr.Borofsky explains them -"the molecules of all human being coming together to create our existence".   

Click here to see how  they were constructing this structure.  

This structure sit on the River Spree, in Berlin.  It's a nice place particularly during the sunrise or sunset, when you can take lovely pictures of these molecular man. 

Jonathan has worked on many creative sculptures of human beings which are displayed in various cities in the world.  His creations look amazing and awe inspiring.  If you are interested, visit them at http://www.borofsky.com/

Hair dare and a short vacation...

I never had any hairdresser, coz I hardly needed them!  I never dared to go for any hair styling.  All I do is just go for a hair cut, which would be for 1 or 2 cms - that too once in 4-5 months- that's it!  But 2 days back, I dared to make a hair do.  I had my hair cut short- really short - to just till it touches the shoulder.  This is the first time ever in my life that I've cut it to this size.  Although I decided, I felt bad when the hairdresser's sharp knife chiseled through my hair.  My hair is long, but they are never thick as to Indian standards.  But still I loved my straight, silky long hair.  When I saw 3-4 inch hair deserted on the floor, I did felt bad for them. And I don't know what my mom will say when she see me like this!  


Today when I took shower (hair bath), I realised how easy they were.  For a shower that normally takes 30-40 minutes, today I completed them in few minutes. Glad here!
And now with a new look, I'm off on a short vacation for few days.  I've been waiting to take some time-off for myself - sans (work +blog + flickr + cooking + cleaning).


Hey, but that doesn't stop you from visiting my blog, because I've scheduled posts for next 5 days.  Do visit my blog in my absence, otherwise she will be feeling so isolated and left out!  
I will come back and catch up with my unread posts!  See you all soon!  

A story of a swan

There's a nice lake some time back I visited, and there's so much of swans,ducks and birds around.  That's when I started to admire a swan and just looked at it for about 20 minutes. And that's when I was animated by the way it turn its rubber-type neck! Heck!  Animal watching is so much fun...

posing !

And then she turned away from me!

  

  

And this is the best pose !

Wordless Wednesday - 5

Yeh Dil Maange More!

Yeh Dil Mange more..not the gifts, but love! Not just me, every soul on earth do yearn for love, a cuddle, a smile, little conversation, some attention, a lifetime camaraderie!

IS there anything beautiful/satisfying than sharing the love with the one who loves you so much? If you do think sharing love is THE MOST beautiful thing, then why do we have to wait for a year till this valentine's day to do that? Do we see auspicious time for sharing love?

Many of them (read media) have adulterated the meaning of Love and Valentine's Day. It's not just the day meant for 2 people (a couple who's in love or married). There can't be any discrimination made on this. It's a right to love and to be loved! It's for every single living thing - from animals to birds or insects, to people who live in the streets, to people who work hard to earn the bread, to the one who's been neglected in life, to the one's who've been asked to stay in old age home..I could just go on adding so many! But the point is to share and give love! So give them all the love generously, endlessly!

The world should never be in deficit of love! If that happens, that's the end of world! Long live love!!!

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!!

A walk to remember!

Dear S, 
I promise to you
when we grow old and
reminisce about our days of togetherness
the journey we take through 
our memory lane will be 
the best walk to remember!   


Much love,
A

L-O-V-E

Love...in simple...makes life worthwhile!  

Portrait speaks

Another (boring) Saturday browsing through hard-disk photos!  I would soon be able to publish a future international best seller titled "100 things to do when husbands work on a weekend". I'm the queen of sarcasm today!


Came across a beautiful street painter's photo and realised how many such street painters I've seen in my European travel.  The answer is plenty!  
In a continent that always had great artists and painters in abundance, it is not unusual.  I've enjoyed the paintings of these street painters as much as I adored the Vincent Van Gogh or Picasso or anyone!  
Albeit having such a great talent, the street painter's life isn't a piece of cake.  They have to compete everyday with 100 other artists who sit on the same street and who is equally talented as him.  They totally rely on the tourists. And how much they earn or is that sufficient for their day-to-day living or what will they do during winter months are still questions for which I don't know the answer.  
But I must say, I've always stunned at the quickness and the precise with which these painters work.  In 10 minutes your beautiful caricature or pencil portrait gets done!    


In this picture the girl who poses looks more beautiful in the painting isn't it?  

Portrait painting and caricatures 

Here's one more live portrait painting captured!  

These are just a few of the 100's of pictures I took in each town/city or village!  I and S got one painted together in Paris.   It's a nice souvenir to carry with you along with the lovely memories you had in that particular city.  

Photography Gyan # 6 (Long Exposure)

I know this is the 100th time I am saying this, but can't stop myself without any inkling!  If you are using a slow shutter speed you definitely need to use a tripod. And the previous gyan's last picture is taken with slow shutter speed (1 sec).
Learning slow shutter speed (long exposure) is so much fun.  And learning them with not-so-great photos is even more fun.  To me, learning is at its best - only when we learn from our mistakes and not from what makes us proud.
Do you know how to make jelabi, sev etc. Why am I jumping from photography to food topic?  Confused??  See the below pictures.
Here's the Jelabi!  (Shutter speed used is 4 secs)

Here's some Sev! (1/2 sec)

And some Thenkuzhal (2 sec exposure)

 

How relishing are they!  I'm talking about these photos.  I don't know how many budding photographers have liked slow shutter speed Light trials and experimentation, but I simply loved them.  Isn't it so much fun to make all kinds of Indian snacks and sweets using your camera?


These are some of the myriad scrap photos that I had.  They are definitely not the best ones, but they are mine - still precious to me.  So I am using them here to explain slow shutter speed.
Setting low shutter speed means increasing the time.  Refer here.

If you are using point and shoot (Henceforth called as P&S), set the camera to night shot mode. It will automatically chooses a slow shutter speed depending on the light conditions.  When you press the shutter button, move around the camera in any desired direction and make your own Jelabi, jangri,thenkuzhal and murukku!
If you are using a SLR, set to S mode, increase the shutter speed to 4 or more sec and rotate, tilt or zigzag your camera, and you can see these light trials (perfect lines that are formed due to long exposure).

These can be done handheld.  But if you want these light trials to be perfectly lined, you need tripod.  Take a look at this picture here.  It's taken with 8 sec exposure.  Aren't these traffic light trials awesome.  I haven't tried my hands on them yet, because I don't get to travel a lot in the night time with a tripod.
A long exposure will increase the clarity of the picture if it is positioned in tripod.


Some examples of how a picture looks if they are handheld with long exposure.   This one's taken with just 1 sec exposure.  Keeping your camera standstill for 1 sec is very difficult - try it out and you will realize yourself!

And this one's taken with 1/2 sec exposure.  Taken during diwali in our very own Chennai. 

And this one below is even less - 1/3 sec. 

You now realize the importance of tripod?  

Now it totally puts me in shame to even publish above shown pictures in my so-called-beautiful-blog that has some nice pictures.  Even worse are to watermark them with my name! As if there are 1000s of people to steal and misuse these pictures!
Below is one of that million dollar picture I have (badly framed though), taken with a proper tripod stand and set at 8 sec exposure.  This is the image of Sri Parthasarathy temple Gopuram, as seen from my in-laws' terrace. 

So it's time for you to try out your favorite snack or sweet in your camera!


PS: I've just past 10th Feb by 26 minutes. I spent around 2 hours researching my archives to pick right pictures and realised just now that I'am already on 11th Feb. So I'm taking the liberty of post dating the post to 11.45pm on 10th Feb. 

Thursday Challenge - RED

After a thoughtful consideration of whether to write a proper post or not, sleep preceded over writing!  So keeping it simple to Thursday Challenge!  


Anything in RED is this weeks prompt.  

This is a decoration  light I spotted in one of the Christmas markets.  

Wordless Wednesday - 4

Ten on Tuesday - 8

Here's the random 10 things that I did when the husband was working over the weekend glued to the computer at home!  Which means I still have no free time, but to cook and serve him, let alone feed him!  And the weather outside was pretty cold, so did not divulge myself to go out for any photo shoot.
I was so bored, and tried to do 100 other things to keep myself occupied!  How crazy that could get? Presenting a few of the stupidest things that I did over the last weekend.


1. Downloaded / installed 100 apps on my iphone and saw how they are and after some fiddling, deleted them!  
2. Cleared my wardrobe and re-arranged them again!  
3. When you are bored, you don't want to do the regular chores like washing, cleaning, cooking etc.  While I was reading Memoirs of a Geisha, all of sudden I wanted to check my typing skills.  So, set the timer on, opened the word doc and started typing one chapter.  And had a pat on my back!
4. Went through amazon and added some 25 items as a wishlist. I think I need to email these to S!
5. Pampered myself. Soaked for hours in the bath and applied loads of moisturizing cream.  
6. Wrote a few blog topics for the days to come and have drafted them.  Whenever an idea struck me, I open and key in the details and save as draft.  I work on them one day, whenever something enlightens me!  Yes.  I have 35 drafts so far!  
7. Connected my harddisk and went through my archives especially photos. Going through old junk data, excel, photos, scraps is a nice feeling. I saw an excel which read Notes from my life.  It had some random dates and what happened that day!   
8. Browsed through Imdb and made a list of 25 movies that I need to download and see. 
9. Drank some 15 glasses of water. Room hopped every 15-20 minutes, went to kitchen and drank a glass of water!  
10. Prepared a bucket list / things to do for the next 10 years! Haven't completed them.  Will write about them in a separate post!


Any other interesting ideas to do when we get bored, Please share them.  I might desperately need them over the next few weekends too! 

Add Calories!

Calorie is a word people does not want to hear these days!  They think it as a monster.  I've heard a few girls saying "Oh that's hell a lotta calories.  I don't want them".  Calories are not monsters or demons!


Calories aren't bad for anyone.  They're like fuel.  They are like oxygen and water.  Everyone must intake certain calories.  You need them to charge and energize yourself.  But too much of calories are not good.   Being underweight or overweight is not good!


So, if you want to reduce few gms/kgs of weight or add weight, first thing you need to do is understand your BMI(Body Mass Index) which tells you if you are fit or you need to reduce weight or gain weight) and keep track of daily calories you are taking in.


You can use this link to check how you want to work out your plan.  
http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html


Entering the details will give you a result of how much calorie you need to maintain your weight, or reduce your weight or to increase them.  Then you have to keep track of daily calorie intake.
Before cautiously reducing your food intake, try to add the details of food you are having everyday for a couple of days (at-least for about a week).  Once you recognise the calorie intake per day, start to work out.  It's simple math, not rocket science.


In this ipad and iphone world, it is not difficult to track these.  There's calorie calculator applications available which you can download in your phone.  Alternatively, there's online journal too.  I used MyfitnessPal (both online and app versions are available).


This app will ask you to create profile with personal information like what's your current weight, Goal Weight, Height, Gender, Level of Activities.  And you have to set a target for Calorie Intake.  You can't choose a random number here. The targeted calorie intake should be sensible one.


While keeping targets for reducing weight, be cautious to choose enough time for it.  Reducing 10kgs in a month or 5 kgs in 2 weeks is insane!  Take your time!  It's like adding weight - it can't happen overnight!


Note 1:  For women the minimum calorie intake should be atleast 1200 and for men it should be 1500.


Instead of choosing low calorie intake, you can actually keep a good amount of calorie intake and burn some of them by doing certain exercises like climbing stairs, walking, cleaning or by doing simple stretch exercises.  That is always healthier option.  For eg instead of keeping the target as 1200, keep 1700 and burn 400 or so. You got it? 


There's a tab to check the progress you are making.If you are worrying how to identify calories in every food.  Don't worry.  You can identify them as KCal in every product.  If that's a food that you prepare at home, you can google or if you are using the above said application, it has every food details from rice, to biriyani to gobi aloo to butter chicken.  Similarly, you have to key in the activities that you are doing everyday like washing, cooking, cleaning vessels, walking, running, climbing stairs etc. 


But you have to religious follow them, update the tracker everytime you eat, and look out for Kcal details in every food product.  If you could follow these, I'm sure this app is helpful and you will start reaching your target of gaining or reducing weight.


I've written so much because I did all these, used the app, and saw a good change.  So happy calorie counting and diet tracking!

When the husband works on weekend...

How does it feel?  It bores me to death staring at the walls!
This weekend was more of that kind - both the days!  I tried reading the book, but could not concentrate.  I did my normal house chores, spoke with my parents on skype, attempted to watch tele.  But I actually did nothing wholeheartedly.
Listened to some songs online and engaged myself during the solitude. I thought of sharing this particular song that features Nicole Scherzinger.

I like Nicole - her voice, bronze colored skin and her height that looks awfully beautiful onscreen.  This song (below) did not hit the charts really well (to be honest, none of her single charts had a great hit).  But I liked this song, can I say particularly for the cinematography! It's a visually astounding album, where Nicole (who looks gorgeous in this song) wanders around picturesque location.  I'll let you enjoy the song!

Isle of Arran - Part 3

It wouldn't be fair to leave the travelogue incomplete.  So, I will conclude this long procrastinated travelstory here.  You might want to read through Isle of Arran - Part 1 and Part 2 here. 


Third part is nothing much except rain and more rain!  But the summer/early autumn rain is always beautiful.    They smell nice!


Brodick Castle located on the north side of Brodick Bay, is situated under the shadow of Goatfell mountain and is a part of Brodick Country park.  A venture into this country park will make you witness walled gardens, Bavarian summerhouse, an ice house and various woodland walking trials.  Not to forget the flora and fauna that were in abundance.  I like country parks for walking trials.  The routes are normally scenic and simple to walk on any given day. With that erratic weather, we gave up our plans of trekking Goatfell and chose the woodland trial. But reaching the brodick castle from our B&B itself was a scenic trial. 
  
And as we passed through this tiny stream...

We were just hunting to catch sight of the castle, but that was so misty.  And Ah, we spotted it finally.  

We walked about 1 mile away from the centre of the town and saw this lovely stretch of coastline covered by mist

There are numeral walking trials to reach Brodick castle and trek up to the Goatfell.  We chose this route and it was so green!  

These Gazebo kind of small houses were beautiful inside the country park.  

And that's the only proper castle photo I managed to take in that rain.

One can spend a day inside this country park.  There's so much to see and do.  It's worth a visit during spring when rhododendron bursts in full bloom (I was said this information at the ticket centre). 

This is the walking trial route which took us through the wildflower meadows.  

And the trial ended with this dramatic small wooden bridge.  

Since it was drizzling constantly,  I could not take many pictures.

 Brodick Castle and country park is worth a visit if you are in Isle of Arran.  This whole isle is a beautiful nature filled place with so much to do and see.  

  

Photography Gyan # 5 (Shutter Speed during Night)

There's a famous saying "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it"(quote by Benjamin Disraeli). So I started writing about photography to share my experiences and learning, and partially(read secretly) to improve my own knowledge as well!


And I'm totally glad that it's motivating me to write more. On continuation with the Story of Shutter speed, today's topic is  using shutter speed during night.  
By far, this is the biggest challenge for any budding photographer.  If you decipher the reason behind blur images, it drills down to one of the main issue - shutter speed!
Does not matter what camera you have, if you intend to take good night shots, you have to invest in a tripod.  It's an asset you'll never regret of buying!  That said, I am not asking you to buy them immediately or that you cannot take a night shot without tripod.  You can - but that takes lot of time and effort.


Be cautious that when you take the night shots, you have to keep the camera firm.Even the slightest micro movement could cause a major impact on your picture. While it is true that fast movements can be captured well in high shutter speed, it is also true that slow shutter speed of the same movement might produce a magical shot!  And to cover the depth(of what I know) of this topic will take a few posts, I will keep this post simple and straightforward. 
Let's cut to the chase, leave all these sidetracks for discussions! 


Here's Example 1:-

This one's taken handheld with a high shutterspeed  (apparently without flash).  The shutter speed used was 1/125 sec.   You can adjust the shutter speed in S Mode in SLR.
For point and shoot, Auto mode without flash will yield this kind of picture.  








Realised that the previous photo needed some divine light.  So switched on the flash, and increased the shutter speed a bit to see what comes on the picture.  Shutter speed used here is 1/160 sec..
For point and shoot, Auto with flash will give this result.

Now how does this look like??  Did you like this picture??  Of course this is not a fine one, but were taken during my experimentation.  To bring this to perfection like this, we need to use tripod and practice more.  Ok. Let me test your knowledge - The shutter speed used in this picture is slow or fast?  Write back in the comment.

Practice a few night shots and see how it comes. As this is an extensive topic, I will leave the rest for the next post, until then happy clicking and a happy saturday!